Choose to  by being compassionate!

Let’s make Kindness be the operating order in our school as well as it is for so many others. All interaction should reflect that.

What wisdom can you find that is greater than kindness? 

~Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Here is what we read on “The Charter for Compassion” website:

“Cultivating compassion in educational settings, and creating the kind of culture where it is a norm of student and staff behaviour, may seem at first a noble ideal: a nice-to-have, something to be undertaken only when all other priorities are met. Yet we now have the evidence to show that a school’s ability to foster real learning, indeed to fulfill its fundamental purpose, depends on its ability to do just that.

More and more schools and educational organizations/groups are acting on this evidence and creating compassion-filled learning environments. Students and adults alike thrive when their social and emotional needs are met, when they feel a sense of belonging, when they feel their voices are welcomed and heard. Choosing to uphold the principles of compassion is central to a school’s ability to create a caring and inclusive culture and climate, to nurture a strong moral identity among those who walk through its doors, and to invite deep participation and learning.

What’s more, compassionate action is foundational to effective collaboration, and to advancing the common good—attributes that, in today’s increasingly connected world—are central to success. A compassionate school begins with the adults on campus walking their talk and modelling compassion to all.”

Let’s start with this: When you use a person’s name, show respect to them and their ideas!

Education expert Molly Barker created an easy tool for younger kids to learn about empathy and compassion: Simply take a few pairs of shoes and label them. “Poor,” “rich,” “boy,” “girl,” “homeless,” “physically disabled,” “old,” “young,” “sick,” “from a different country,” “different religion,” “different ethnicity,” and “different political beliefs.” She then asks the child to “walk” in another person’s shoes.   (source)

In other words: “Do to others only what you would like to be done to you”.

In 2008, Seattle hosted the Seeds of Compassion event with the Dalai Lama, and in 2010, the Seattle City Council declared Seattle to be the world’s first “Compassionate City.” Now, more than 80 cities have joined the movement — from Gaziantep, Turkey, to Louisville, Kentucky.

The Youth Ambassador Program, headed by Lori Markowitz, grew out of Seattle’s 2008 Seeds of Compassion event. Markowitz creates programs based on her belief that “we don’t empower young people enough to be part of the solution.”

Markowitz was asked by the county court system to come up with a way for her ambassadors to combat absenteeism in Seattle’s low-performing schools. One of her teen-to-teen mentoring programs proved so successful that the school is now offering it as an education course for credit.

Now the state of Washington is looking at this class to see if it can be replicated around the state because it changes the environment in the schools.

The Charter for Compassion has also spawned a movement to create a worldwide network of compassionate schools. The first “official” compassionate school was named in London, Ontario, in 2011.(Canada)

The drive to bring compassion to schools has increased even faster than the city campaign. A number of programs were started not by adults, but by the children themselves.

The Vancouver School Board ( Canada) offers a complete compassion curriculum . Lessons range from a high school science lesson on water systems, which asks, “How do our choices have environmental and human consequences?” to elementary school exercises on the importance of memory to children and adults. And now, a program cosponsored by the Dalai Lama Center for Peace and Education is rolling out compassion education for kids and training for teachers across the province.

Source